Being Changed By The Power Of PrayerSample

Humility in Prayer

When we bring our needs before God, we begin to recognize our inability to get what we need on our own. It’s an act of humility where we fully trust God as the provider, and God wants us to fully rely on Him.

If we really trust that God will provide for us, if we really do rely fully on Him, we will trust Him with what he chooses to provide us with.If we ask for something specific and then get mad at God when we don’t get it, we are actually not trusting that God should be the one in control. It’s more like we just ask him to get something for us. The only trust, the only reliance is that He will bend to my will when in reality, we are to bend to God’s will. We are to trust that He will give us what we need and that He will truly work out all things together for the good of those who love Him (Romans 8:28).

While praying in the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus Christ himself demonstrates this by asking His father to remove His suffering if possible. Although he asks this, He knows the impossibility of this request. He knows that He must go and die, so he ends his prayer with a beautiful demonstration of how to bend our wills to God’s: “Not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42).

In prayer, God has us bring our needs to Him because by doing so, we discover what we truly need. A lot of times, we think of prayer like an attempt to get God to do what we want. If I have enough faith, if I say the right words, God will do this for me. For the most part, though, prayer is a way for us to change our hearts. The more we pray, the closer we get to the triune God, causing us to agree with Him in His will, not our own.  

As you read these verses, think about how wonderful it is that we serve a God that graciously took on our sin so that we could be saved.